Museums at Night 2013 last minute marketing tips

There’s nothing like a Museums at Night event to get people excited, and already  we’ve seen lots of media coverage of your events. Want more? Here are some last-minute promotional tactics that you can carry out in the next 15 minutes.

1) Register!

Make sure that your Museums at Night event is registered in Culture24′s database! With two days till the festival kicks off, this is your very last chance to benefit from our national PR campaign: if journalists ask us what’s happening in your area, and we don’t have details of your event, we can’t spread the word about it! Here’s how to register.

2) Make sure your event is listed on your own website

Double check that you’re promoting whatever your Museums at Night event is on your own site (and Facebook page, if you have one). It sounds obvious but at the very least you need to list the date, event times and ticket price, along with contact details for potential visitors to make a booking or find out more.

3) Chase your local media

If you’ve already sent press releases, that’s great – but now’s the time to follow up with a phone call. Your local newspapers and radio stations are looking for content – so could you do a short interview with them on Thursday morning about the Museums at Night excitement you’re planning?

Will they send a reporter or photographer along on the night? Phone them now!

4) Use your social media channels

Reach out to your followers on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, and any other social media channels you use. Share your excitement as you get ready – we’re already seeing some great behind-the-scenes photos being tweeted, such as this teaser from artist Julian Wild:

And by night…. #museumsatnight @museumsatnight @blistshill twitter.com/jrewild/status…

— julian wild (@jrewild) May 13, 2013

… and this costumed preview from Chiltern Open Air Museum:

Staff at Chiltern Open Air Museum preparing for a fairy tale Enchanted Museum evening this Saturday! @museumsatnight twitter.com/ChilternOAM/st…

— Chiltern Museum (@ChilternOAM) May 13, 2013

However, in your messages, be sure to include a link to your event listing online, or to the site where people can find out more and book tickets. Rather than just broadcasting, if you want your followers to take action, make it easy for them by giving them a link to click rather than forcing them to Google for more details.

Don’t forget, the Twitter hashtag for Museums at Night 2013 is #MatN2013 – if you use it, we’ll retweet you.

5) Send an email about your event

Send a quick newsflash reminder to your email network about your Museums at Night event – this is their last chance to book tickets! Bonus points if you have a good image to include.

6) Guerrilla marketing on the night

You’ve already distributed posters, flyers and leaflets around your area, but you want to attract new audiences on the night too – but if you don’t have enough staff to stand outside welcoming potential visitors, how can you grab their attention?

Good signage can make a big difference: if your venue’s on a side street that doesn’t get much passing traffic, use pop-up A-frame signs to catch people’s eye.

Don’t have signs? Simply chalk on the pavements! During Museums at Night last year several venues chalked a trail of arrows to direct passers-by to their front doors, and were delighted to report that this drew in curious new visitors.

7) Keep us updated!

If your tickets are selling slowly or quickly, if you may have to cancel or if your event’s now fully booked, please update us! Call 01273 623336 or tweet @MuseumsAtNight.

To be opened very soon … they’re from the champagne tasting night at Bath’s Fashion Museum, and they’ve got our name on! (c) Bath Fashion Museum

Thanks to everyone who’s shared their marketing highlights with us, including blog posts by poets performing at events; a teaser feature about artist Richard Wentworth’s Museums at Night plans for Manchester;  and this promotional video from Liverpool’s Light Night:

LightNight from the Hatch on Vimeo.

And finally, thanks for all your lovely comments about this year’s BBC History Magazine Guide to Museums at Night!

Got good or bad news about your Museums at Night event?

With seven days to go until the festival explodes into life, it’s that time when last minute changes happen – so please keep us informed!

A face from the past at London’s Benjamin Franklin House, preparing to take visitors back in time (c) Benjamin Franklin House

Making changes

We’ve already sent out a lot of press releases about the Museums at Night events registered in our database. If the details of your event have changed, please log in to your record and amend the listing.

Slow ticket sales

If you’re having difficulty selling tickets and your team are getting concerned that your event may not be a success, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can go all out to flag it up in our public-facing communications. If you let us know straight away, we may be able to help you! Contact Nick Stockman on nick@culture24.org.uk or call 01273 623278.

Cancellations

If for some reason you need to cancel your event, please tell us so we don’t keep promoting the event and send frustrated visitors your way, only to be disappointed! Simply email rosie@culture24.org.uk ASAP.

Sold out?

We’re always pleased to hear that your events are sold out – but the public need to know as well.

Log in to your event record and open the Event Status dropdown menu – then change the status from Confirmed to Fully Booked, and save your changes.

All the best!

There’s not long to go, now – excitement is mounting and the Museums at Night team are already getting booked up for radio interviews! And for the second year running we have well over 500 Museums at Night events taking place across the UK – find out what’s happening in your area at www.museumsatnight.org.uk.

Guest Post: Ross Graham on the Granary Gallery’s portrait evening

Hope everyone had a good long weekend! Our latest Museums at Night guest post is by Ross Graham, discussing the newly-converted Granary Gallery’s first ever Museums at Night event.

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Visitors admire some of the art work on display in the gallery.

The Granary Gallery is a very recently opened gallery space located in the newly converted (you guessed it) Old Granary building found on the historic walls of that most northern of north towns, Berwick Upon Tweed. Although the gallery is located in The Granary (now a very modern YHA building with great food), it is owned and run by Berwick Visual Arts, part of The Maltings Theatre and Cinema which is just 2 minutes away.

A Portrait of Portraits, our Museums at Night event

This will be the first time we have taken part in Museums at Night and are very eagerly awaiting the response we will get.

For a small town, Berwick-upon-Tweed has a large bunch of artists from all kinds of backgrounds, with all kinds of skills. With this event we are hoping to draw them all in – painters, sketchers, crafters, photographers and film makers of all ages.

The evening will be an open door event with no pre-booking required, and the activities will be… well, they will be ‘active’ from the start! We currently have the Ruth Borchard Collection of Self-Portraits in the Gallery, so what better than a night for visitors to create their own self-portraits?

There will be all kinds of materials available from simple pencils and paper to craft materials and even (fingers crossed) digital face editing. We will also have an artist on site who will be creating portraits for visitors even if they don’t want to try designing their own – although we hope that everybody who visits on the night will be inspired to create something.

Visitors looking at the artwork in the Granary Gallery

Marketing

To spread the word about our Museums at Night event we have done the usual: creating posters, sending emails, using our social media channels, spreading  word-of-mouth through gossip, sending owls etc.

However, the new marketing idea we’re really excited about is starting a competition. We are asking people to submit photos of their own portraits to our Facebook and Instagram pages. The top 5 pictures on each page that get the most ‘likes’ by the 17^th May will be put up for judgement by visitors at the actual event – and the winner will receive complimentary film tickets to The Maltings.

See you on the night!

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Ross Graham has worked in The Maltings Theatre and Cinema for about 6 years: he has worked in most areas throughout that time and now works at the Box Office, helps with Youth Drama and is the Education and Community Development Worker for the Theatre.

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Thanks, Ross!

If you’re reading this and you have an interesting story to tell or case study to share about planning or marketing after-hours events at your arts or heritage venue, I’d love to publish your guest posts as well. Please email rosie@culture24.org.uk.

Guest post: Antonia Grant describes Handel House Museum’s first Museums at Night event

Here at C24 Towers we’re delighted with this year’s BBC History Magazine Guide to Museums at Night: copies of the brochure should now have arrived at all participating venues. We’re dressing up smartly to head off to the Museums at Night launch at the Cutty Sark this evening, and will report back tomorrow!

Our latest guest post is by Antonia Grant from London’s Handel House Museum, who introduces their first ever Museums at Night event.

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Handel House Museum is located just a stone’s throw from Bond Street, tucked away on Brook Street. It offers the more intrepid tourist a historic haven to relax and have an intimate glimpse into the life and home of one of the world’s greatest composers, George Frideric Handel.

The museum, part of London Small Historic Houses, is built over two floors reflecting both the private and public persona of Handel, while intriguingly, over 300 years later another iconic composer and musician moved in next door, the legendary Jimi Hendrix. You couldn’t get a more musically fantastic cocktail!

A harpsichord on display at Handel House Museum (c) Matthew Hollow

Overcoming challenges – Hallelujah!

I was very excited at the prospect of Handel House taking part in this year’s Museums at Night for the first time. I’d run a similar event last year at Edinburgh University’s Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, which proved extremely popular, attracting a diverse audience. At Handel House, again, one of the main challenges was the space and accessibility.

Our idea is to have a series of activities taking place throughout the evening, centered on this year’s theme ‘Handel by Candle!’ We’ll be running candlelit tours and harpsichord recitals for small, intimate groups as well as offering free admission for visitors from 6:30 – 10pm.

Visitors viewing the bedroom at Handel House (c) Niusia Winczewski

A unique selling point

As part of the museum’s public events programme, a Baroque music concert takes place in the historic Rehearsal and Performance room. This is the very room Handel would have used to rehearse his next operas or oratorios to an invited audience and we keep this tradition alive every week.

By offering a concert during Museums at Night we hope to share this special space with a new audience. There will be an opportunity for our younger visitors to interact with the House on the evening too, with fun family trails and activity sheets and Georgian costumes to dress up in.

Publicity tips – from Baroque to Rock star!

As the evening will be open to families and adults, we’ll use a number of ways to reach out to both these groups. We will issue a press release to local and targeted newspapers and magazines, as well as adding the event on various family-friendly and event listings sites. Not forgetting social media: Facebook and Twitter are great ways to reach our audience and link with similar organisations and people.

We’ll build interest by revealing different elements of the evening – but not too much to spoil the surprise! And so as not to forget our already loyal audience, we will let them know about the event by including it in our season brochure and monthly e-newsletter.

Young visitors dressing up at Handel House Museum (c) Niusia Winczewski

As it will be the first time we’ve participated in the Museums at Night festival, we can’t wait to find out how it goes!

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Antonia Grant has worked at Handel House Museum for over a year as the Learning and Events Officer. She obtained a BA Degree in History and Classical Civilisation from University College Dublin followed by a MSc in History, Theory and Display from Edinburgh University.

Antonia is interested in making the arts as accessible as possible to a wide audience, and creating innovative and exciting learning programmes and events.

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Thanks, Antonia!

If you’re reading this and you have an interesting story to tell or case study to share about planning or marketing after-hours events at your arts or heritage venue, I’d love to publish your guest posts as well. Please email rosie@culture24.org.uk.

Order your free BBC History Magazine Guides to Museums at Night by Wednesday 3rd April!

BBC History Magazine’s Guide to Museums at Night is nearly ready, and it’s going to be very special: this year’s cover design is by top artist Fred Deakin!

The Guide is an A5 glossy brochure with 16 pages of themed editorial roundups and photos celebrating and promoting the festival, giving a flavour of the diverse and exciting events taking place. It’s not a dry series of listings, but is designed to encourage people who pick it up to head to the Museums at Night website to find out more about festival events taking place near them.

Families looking for after-hours inspiration (c) John Rylands Library, Manchester

All the 70,000 readers of BBC History Magazine will receive the Guide, but we’re also having 75,000 extras printed to distribute through Tourist Information Centres and to send out to your venues. For the last couple of years, this has been a key part of the Museums at Night festival marketing at a local level.

Last year, the venues who requested brochures had great success in raising awareness about the festival placing them in foyers and cafes, local libraries, bookshops, theatres, cafes, bars, and supermarkets: you know better than we do the places that people are likely to pick up brochures in your town.

Order your free brochures here now!

If your venue is running a Museums at Night event and you don’t fill in the form, we’ll automatically send you a box of 100 brochures. However, if you can take more than this please use the form to let us know by Wednesday 3^rd April, as you won’t be able to ask for more later. You can request as many large boxes (500 brochures) or small boxes (100 brochures) as you want and we will send them to you completely free of charge.

Alternatively, if for some reason you can’t put any brochures out, please fill in the form to let us know so we don’t send you unnecessary copies.

Last year it was incredibly heartening to see many venues who weren’t able to run events supporting the Museums at Night festival, and other local venues by asking for brochures to put out. It would be wonderful to have your support during this campaign.

Could you do this? Please click here to request your Guides!

Guest post: Marketing case study from Rebecca Clay at the Museum of Army Flying

Our latest guest post is by Rebecca Clay from the Museum of Army Flying! Rebecca tells us a bit more about the museum’s plans for a late night behind-the-scenes tour of this very special venue…

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The Museum of Army Flying is a medium sized military museum between Andover and Salisbury. It houses a range of Army aircraft, and is a charitable trust that employs a close knit team of professionals to conserve and communicate its incredible collection.

Programming for specific audiences

This time last year, after being in post for about a month, it became obvious to me that two target audiences would benefit most from an events programme at the Museum of Army Flying: Family and Community and Traditional Culture Vultures.

I had experience of running evening and afternoon events in previous employment positions, and knew that if marketed correctly they could be incredibly successful and rewarding. With this in mind I planned a two year programme of events to tie in with anniversaries and seasonal occasions.

One of the events I really wanted to run was a Culture24 Museums at Night event, specifically a behind-the-scenes tour that would give the ‘die hard’ fans of the museum everything they could dream of.

Entitled ‘The Curator’s Cupboard’, I wanted this event to open up some of the unseen treasures of our collections, including items from World War One flying aces, a sure fire hit with our enthusiast audience.

Poster promoting the Curator’s Cupboard Museums at Night event

Overcoming challenges and adding value

One challenge that we’ll face by running a behind-the-scenes, out-of-hours event is the restrictions that have to be placed on numbers. This, coupled with the costs of keeping the museum open after hours, means that we have to charge more than we have for our previous events.

However, this limitation actually had a positive effect for our team, as we plotted together how to make it bigger and better, heaping added value and once-in-a-lifetime experiences into the event to ensure that people weren’t frightened off by the price tag.

This included planning a series of mini-talks around the museum by veteran pilots and experts about the different aircraft we have on display. One of these will be about our experimental aircraft, which are super quirky and a definite crowd pleaser.

A unique selling point – “I’ve flown that one!”

A remarkable bit of good fortune struck when one of our volunteers mentioned he thought he had flown two of the aircraft on display in the museum. I stress that he had not only flown the aircraft type but the actual aircraft on display (he checked the tail numbers against his log book) so he can give visitors first hand knowledge about our aircraft during their working life.

Army Helicopter

Publicity tips

To publicise the event I have gone all out – well, as all out as you can go without a budget! The press release has gone out and has already been featured in some of our local newspapers. I will also issue a photocall invitation to local press photographers, so the publicity will hopefully have a life even after the event takes place.

I also issue posters and leaflets for every event and send them to local libraries, museums and Tourist Information Centres. My top tip for getting radio coverage is to upload all your events onto the radio station’s calendar on their website; they’ll often mention them if they get a chance.

To say we are really looking forward to the event is an understatement – I often get more excited by our objects than the public!

Here’s to Museums at Night!

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Rebecca Clay has worked at the Museum of Army Flying as Marketing and Audience Development for nearly a year. Previously she worked in Marketing and Project Officer roles for Creswell Crags in North Nottinghamshire (currently shortlisted for World Heritage Status).

Rebecca was awarded her CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing in 2010, and also has an Honours degree in Cultural Heritage from the University of Manchester. She is a self-professed geek interested in all things web, particularly WordPress websites and social media.

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Thanks, Rebecca! If you’re reading this and you have an interesting story to tell or case study to share about planning or marketing after-hours events at your arts or heritage venue, I’d love to publish your guest posts as well. Please get in touch at rosie@culture24.org.uk.

Calling all venues: register your Museums at Night events by Tuesday 26 February!

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery are preparing to open their doors after hours for the Museums at Night festival. Photo (c) Alan Russell

Culture24 has had an action-packed few days launching the Connect10 public vote, which seems to be reaching more people than ever before - in less than a week, over 10,000 votes have already been cast!

We’ve also been speaking to lots of museums and galleries about registering and publicizing your Museums at Night events, which this year range from Doctor Who sleepovers to bat walks and ghost hunts. (Looking for inspiration? Check out our Big List of Museums at Night event ideas.)

Our next series of themed press releases highlighting interesting Museums at Night events will be sent out to magazines on Wednesday 27 February. Your event can be part of this next round of publicity – but you’ll need to register it in our database by 5pm on Tuesday 26^th February.

To register your Museums at Night event, log in to your Culture24 account here and add the new event listing, making sure to open the Programmes option and tick the box marked Museums at Night 2013.

Do describe your event making it sound as compelling as possible – what makes it unique, why is it unmissable, and what will visitors be able to experience if they come along?

If you haven’t yet confirmed your plans, but know that you’ll be doing something, you can log in and add as much detail as you can to your event listing as normal, but change the event status from Confirmed to Planning. This means that the Culture24 team will be able to see it and mention it in publicity, but it won’t be visible to the public until you log back in and switch the status to Confirmed.

And once you’ve added your event listing, please email rosie@culture24.org.uk any high-res photos of people having fun at your venue after hours, which we can share with the media. Here’s what we look for in publicity photos.

If you have any issues or questions, please call 01273 623336 or email rosie@culture24.org.uk.

Finally, if your plans aren’t finalized yet and you can’t register your event on our database before this deadline, then don’t worry – we’ll be accepting event registration up until Museums at Night weekend. However, to make the most of the PR opportunities we can offer you, the sooner you can register your event details the better!

Marketing update: making the most of Museums at Night

Visitors at Calke Abbey, Derbyshire (c) National Trust Images / Paul Harris

Early publicity: a good example

Kelham Island Museum have been talking about their entry in the Connect10 competition on Twitter, where they attracted the attention of a local journalist. They quickly followed up this contact with a press release and a set of images, which has already lead to an article about their plans in the Postcode Gazette – congratulations!

This is a great example of how Museums at Night marketing works: we’ll be promoting the festival as a whole through targeted PR activity aimed at national and regional media, but there’s no substitute for doing your own local marketing as well, using all the channels available to you to get the word out!

Help us to promote you:

1) Register your Museums at Night events in our database as soon as possible, describing them to make them sound exciting!

2) Send us your publicity photos for our media image library.

3) Tell your local audiences and media what you’re planning – I’ll be reissuing an updated version of our Museums at Night PR Toolkit very soon to help you with this.

Spreading the word through Twitter

In addition to retweeting your tweets about your event plans, @MuseumsAtNight will be tweeting a different Museums at Night event highlight every working day from now until the festival kicks off in May.

The Museums at Night 2013 hashtag to use is #MatN2013.

Idea development – call us!

This week I spoke at a meeting of members of the Historic Houses Association about the benefits of taking part in Museums at Night, and particularly how the festival marketing campaign can help with audience development.

One of the key points I took away was that the kind of idea generation and marketing coaching I’ve been offering informally over the phone is very much appreciated, and probably something I should be talking about more!

So, if you’re considering running a Museums at Night event – if you’ve had a look at the Big List of inspiring event ideas, and our tips on audience development, and you’d like to talk through your plans, give me a call on 01273 623336. Let’s have a 15 minute brainstorming chat about making the most of your skills and resources, pitching the event to appeal to your target audience, and how you’re going to market it. Everyone who I’ve had these focused phonecalls with has found them useful – so please don’t feel shy about giving me a call.

And finally, a lot of our work around Museums at Night is about connecting museums, staff and volunteers through different networks; building capacity and sharing skills and learning from across the arts and heritage sector. With this in mind, it’s interesting to read the latest update from the Happy Museum Project.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Excellent Museums at Night publicity photos

Hello again, it’s Holly the intern here!

I’ve had a very busy couple of days playing with a spreadsheet which has details of all of your lovely Museums at Night events. I’ve called a lot of participating museums, asking you all to send me photos of previous after-hours events that Culture24 can use to publicize the Museums at Night festival.

We’ve received an abundance of emails with some really amazing photos, and we wanted to share some of the best with you.

Because the festival is Museums at Night, we need pictures taken at night, or at least dusk. This example from Lewes Castle is excellent as it shows the castle at dusk, with a volunteer in period dress holding a dramatic blazing torch as he looks over the castle walls – giving a good impression of what it would be like to visit their venue.

Soldier on the ramparts of Lewes Castle.

So what could be better than a lovely night time picture of your museum and its surroundings? Well, a picture of visitors interacting with your collection of course!

This picture from Canterbury Museums, who are running an event called Owls, Lanterns and Moonlit Landscapes, where stories come alive inspired by their collection of paintings and objects, represents this well as the boys in the image are actively partaking in the activity and all look engaged as they pick up the pieces of pottery.

Children enjoying the hands on area. (c) Canterbury Museums.

Now they say “Never work with children or animals,” but family events are always popular at Museums at Night, so many museums have sent us pictures of previous events aimed at children.

Some excellent examples have come from John Rylands Library in Manchester who are holding a Doctor Who sleepover again this year. Their pictures show children who are in their fancy dress costumes, laughing and having fun, while showing off the historic setting of the library building.

Children in Doctor Who costumes (c) John Rylands Library

Many other venues also ignore this saying by running events that make a feature of the animal kingdom – this year there are several nature walks taking place at museums across the country such as Killhope Lead Mining Museum, Knebworth House or Prestongrange Museum.

But Museums at Night isn’t just for kids! This picture shows mature visitors enjoying themselves at Arlington Court, who are running a Victorian Dinner Party this year. This lady is genuinely laughing and having a great time: looking at this picture, I’d love to be there!

Visitors at Arlington Court enjoying the activities.

We are also looking for images of events that may not normally happen in museums such as this glamorous night out organised by the Museum of Soho.

Woman in masquerade mask at the Museum of Soho.

So having read this, you must be wondering if it’s too late to send us your photos. And the answer is of course not! We still want your photos to add to our media image library to publicize the festival.

Please send us pictures that

• Are in focus
• Are high resolution (at least 300 dpi)
• Feature interested-looking visitors having a good time at your venue, with their faces visible
• Are taken at sunset, at night, or at least out of direct sunlight.

Please send your images to rosie@culture24.org.uk and we’ll work our magic to spread them to the wider world!

Punching above your weight online: Rosie’s article in the AMA’s Journal of Arts Marketing

I recently had an article published in the Arts Marketing Association’s Journal of Arts Marketing which I thought would be useful to share here.

Titled Punching above your weight online, it’s advice for small arts and heritage organisations with limited budgets about how best to use online communication channels.

I like the editorial decision to illustrate the article with an adorable punching kitten who has a shadow the size of a lion. Courtesy JAM / AMA

I’d like to thank everyone who’s shared their case studies with me over the last few months – interesting examples that I cited include:

• Market Lavington Museum’s blog
• Secret Lives of Objects, Leeds Museums & Galleries’ blog
• Old Police Cells Museum’s Facebook page
• Fabrica Gallery’s Facebook page
• STAM (Stadtmuseum Ghent)’s Facebook page
• The Horniman Museum’s Cheese Horse Storify page 

Download the Punching above your weight online article here.

Find out more about the AMA’s Journal of Arts Marketing here.